Students create, sell items to learn financial literacy

Monday

Apr 23, 2012 at 4:24 PM

If the American economy on Main Street is sluggish these days, you couldn't tell it by the flurry of entrepreneurial activity Friday at Hendersonville Elementary.

If the American economy on Main Street is sluggish these days, you couldn't tell it by the flurry of entrepreneurial activity Friday at Hendersonville Elementary. For the past two months, fifth-graders have been working in small groups to create and sell a product. Each group received $15 to make a product, advertise it and bring it to market. The project culminated last week on Market Day, when students sold their wares to their peers as well as adults, fifth-grade teacher Sherry Coren said. April is National Financial Literacy Month and students in schools all across the country are taking part in activities that teach them how business works. Financial literacy is an important lesson to learn, Coren said. "They learn teamwork, how to promote their product, how to sell it, how to make change at the register, and they could earn rewards for good behavior that could be exchanged for things they could use in their product production, such as duct tape or poster board," she said. "This project is important because they have to know how to budget their money, especially in this economy. We didn't really focus on personal finance this time — we're going to do that next year — but this was a good lesson in the basics of how our economy works. Financial education is crucial in today's marketplace."At a booth selling small paper footballs, Caroline Shealey said coming up with a product to sell was part of the fun."They're made out of duct tape, white paper, animal print paper — just a variety of different ones," she said. "No one else was doing that."Team members divided up the responsibilities of making and selling their product, with one student in charge of production, another in charge of promotion and others taking on various tasks, although everyone collaborated on deciding what to sell. Shealey worked with classmates Carson Rikard, Alex O'Brien, Linsey Clark and Mitch Edney. The group's quality control department hit on the idea to make several different kinds of footballs as a way to bring in more money, said Edney."We knew we had to have better quality to get people to come to ours (business booth)," he said.Other booths set up in the school's gym featured zipper pulls made out of paper clips with letter designs on them; stringy creatures crafted out of yarn with googly eyes attached; and headbands made from pipe cleaners.Students could decide what to charge for their product, and prices ranged from 25 cents to $1."We're very persuasive," Madelyn Ball said proudly of her group's efforts to advertise their pipe cleaner headband business. A steady stream of customers lined up at the booth waiting to make a purchase. All the money made from the project will go to a charity selected by the students, Coren said."Last year, the students made $700 and donated it to Special Needs Baseball here in Henderson County," she said.Adding up dollar bills like a pro, Clark counted a profit of $40 and some change from their paper football business. Teams members said they would like to see all the profits donated to the Henderson County Multiple Sclerosis Walk, an annual event that raises money for the charity. Coren said her fifth-grade class voted to donate money to the Relay for Life, an annual fundraiser in Henderson County for cancer research. Each class will vote for a charity, and the one with the most votes will receive the funds, she said. The final decision is expected to be made later this week."We don't care if we win or not, because all the money goes to charity," Edney said. "But this was fun."Coren said the winner of the Market Day competition was a business that produced slingshots made out of popsicle sticks. The business had more than $90 in profits. This year's Market Day event raised nearly $650. The winning team will have lunch with Hendersonville Elementary Principal Shannon Marlowe at the restaurant of their choice. Reach Kelley at 828-694-7871 or at leigh.kelley@blueridgenow.com.

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